Stockholm is a nice-enough city. I was there once during some sort of midsummer, Viking-throwback celebration that looked like nothing more than a lot of handsome white people behaving badly.

“We have the government health care,” a beautiful drunken social worker I hooked up with stressed as part of a ceaseless anti-American diatribe that only ended when she passed out cold against a parked police car. “You have the big buildings and the big cars, but we have the government health care and the socialism.”

She had me on the big buildings and the big cars and the socialist thing in that most Ikea-like country where, and this is the kernel of the story, a betting site is right now offering odds on which words and phrases President-elect Barack Obama might use in his Tuesday inaugural address.

Stockholm-based online betting service Betsson.com has, The Associated Press reports, listed the odds of Obama using certain words with the highly unlikely “banana” and “German Chancellor Angela Merkel” (a name that doesn’t spring to most American minds) given 1,000-to-1 odds.

Which, if a certain powerful man wanted to maybe help out a fella (you know, someone like me), if a certain Harvard Law School graduate might just happen to begin his much-anticipated address with the historically significant words, “And so my fellow bananas, I begin with the words of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who once said, ich bin ein Labradoodle. ”

I threw in the Labradoodle because they are also taking bets on the type of family dog the Obamas might select. In fact, Betsson.com can assist you in losing money on just about any sporting event, market trend, or song contest anywhere in the world, and they can do it in at least 18 different languages. I’m talking Deutsch, English, Francais, Dansk, Polski, Espa ol, Italiano, Magyar, Cesky and all the other old favorites.

No doubt with “sucker” being the one word uniting all users of the site no matter what language they may speak.

Hans Nakkim, Betsson’s communications director, states, “We consider it highly likely that Obama will use the word `change’ in his inaugural speech, and at the same time focus strongly on the financial crisis. However, such speeches are unpredictable, and we have therefore included words that haven’t exactly been common in Obama’s previous speeches.”

Judging by the odds, America’s first black president will very likely use the words “United States,” “change” and “economy.” The respective odds on these words are 1.01 to 1, 1.03 to 1 and 1.05 to 1. Though I am not an expert in such matters, I would recommend that you look for a word that might pay slightly better. (Hint: “cocaine” is paying 500 to 1.)

It is also unlikely, stated the betting spokesman, that the new president will utter the words “axis of evil,” which I was surprised to read because I thought that G.W. had been saying “access to weevil.” And to think, because of this, I was giving him high marks as an agricultural-minded president.

In truth, I have my own list of words that I’d like to hear uttered in the freezing cold come Tuesday morning. I don’t know what the odds are on the individual words comprising this particular assemblage. Still, I sorely want to hear it.

Obama, after removing his hand from the Lincoln Bible: “So what does a family do when they already cut their own lawn, clean their own house, do their own laundry, bathe and walk their own dog, when they already wash their own car, cook their own dinners from ingredients purchased at a big box store and grown out behind the garage, when they do their own home maintenance, when they invested in those 401(k)s to have a little retirement money beyond a Social Security check, when they lost their jobs, lost their health-care coverage, can’t afford to put a kid through college and see nothing every day but terrifically bad economic news? What does that family do?”

I’m betting that he’ll use many of those words. But it’s not the odds that I care about because, like many of you, I already bet on too many dreams that didn’t pay out. What I’m interested in is the answer. And, like any gambler, I’m praying that we finally have a winner.